FX102 Said,

Adrian Said,

I’m with Kaisos. They say you don’t give a band aid to a bullet wound, but as endless eight was an endless barrage of bullet wounds I don’t know how to fix you. If they can fit dissapearence into a movie, that makes it 6 episodes tops, even though it will only be an hour and a half movie anyway. If they had done two endless eight LIKE THEY SHOULD HAVE with beginning and end, this could have been the other six. They either had already planned this (most likely not) before endless eight, or they are doing this because the fans are gunning for their balls. Oh man, if they say that they had planned to do this all along I will spartan kick every member of kyoani staff.

hinode Said,

I’ll be content if this means we get a Blu-Ray release right off the bat. I liked Disappearance a lot more than the rest of the Haruhi novels that I’ve (attempted to) read, so seeing it with a budget upgrade would be nice.

Then again I’m not a hardcore Haruhi fan so waiting isn’t that big a deal to me, so long as it isn’t for completely inscrutible reasons – even that just baffles me rather than angering or irritating me.

Haesslich Said,

Anyone want to bet that Kadokawa screws up Disappearance by making it a three-movie deal, the way they stretched out Endless Eight over eight episodes, to cash in on the DVD/Blu-Ray market? They may want to imitate Gainax with how they’re releasing the Evangelion series in multiple movies, or how Kara no Kyoukai was released over multiple discs to tell the whole novel…

The Juggernaut Said,

Haesslich: Unfortunately it actually makes sense for EVA to have a Tetralogy — even with the condensed storyline (and 12 Angels instead of the original 14), it pretty much stopped following the series by the second movie. It’s all new material from that point on.

It does NOT make sense to do the same for Disappearance. Because that just shows how stupid Kadokawa’s marketing department really is… Which isn’t saying much.

Haesslich Said,

Myssa Rei: it makes sense for NGE and KnK as they have a lot of material to cover (a whole series worth). It did NOT make sense for Endless Eight to do so as there wasn’t a whole series’ worth of material – and they stretched it out to cover almost half of the run. And now they’ve got the gall to sell four DVDs worth of the same episode, when one disc with an extras bit could have covered the differences between each run. All so they could pimp Disappearance as a movie, judging by the timing of this announcement. I won’t bet against Kadokawa trying a KnK approach to Disappearence, just to milk the franchise, not understanding why it works for other series’ movies.

hinode Said,

I think it’s clear now what was going on with that bizarre marketing compaign: Originally Kadokawa/Kyoto Animation planned on making a conventional 14 episode season that included Disappearance and announced just that, but somebody decided to make Disappearance a movie instead, which screwed up their initial plans. This resulted in a long delay and the nonsensical-sounding announcement that the Haruhi sequel was ‘cancelled’ for some sort of ‘new Haruhi broadcast’.

Around this time, somebody at Kadokawa decided it would be a good idea to lead the fanbase on and mislead them as much as possible rather than being upfront with their plans for the franchise. Hence the ambiguously-worded Newtype articles, the 28 episode broadcast with no next-episode previews and no episode lists sent to the magazines, no given prior notice about BLR (except a leak ruined that and got spread across the internet), eight episodes of Endless Eight that aren’t numbered and barely deviate from the formula, to keep up the appearance that it could end at any time, and a movie announcement held back for the very end.

Personally I think this was all a huge mistake that alienated part of the fanbase and really killed any chance of the franchise expanding its audience beyond the otaku subculture, but Kadokawa seemed to think leading their hardcore fans (and admittedly man of them are hardcore enough to stick with the franchise through pretty much anything) on as much as possible was a good idea for whatever reason.

Haesslich Said,

Myssa Rei: I’m not saying it makes sense for Kadokawa to do something that other companies did (and as noted, for good reasons due to the amount of material being covered), but rather that Kadokawa’s in the ‘if they can make money doing this, we must do it too’ mode still, to judge by the rumors about how they kept haranging the Haruhi author to put out yet another volume… or conversely, delaying it depending on who you believe.

But with the way they did Endless Eight, I have no faith in them or KyoAni (who brought in their C-team from K-On – it shows in the character designs which are NOT HARUHI) to successfully release Disappearance. Anyone who says this is the next great coming of Haruhi is clearly smoking something, or so delusional that they (and all the idiots who bought Endless Eight Volume 1, and who will undoubtedly buy Volumes 2-4 of the EXACT SAME FRAKING MATERIAL) deserve to be consigned permanently to that timeloop so as not to affect the gene pool or consume resources the rest of us (who are smarter than them) need.

hinode: That’s my guess as to why Endless Eight was stretched out the way it was – to cut the much-acclaimed Disappearance arc into its own movie. What I’m afraid will happen is that the same geniuses who came up with this idea will crib from Gainax and UFOTable and split up the arc between multiple discs, the way they did Endless Eight, in order to maximize profits from the morons who want the complete show… and in doing so, add in more filler which will make it fucking boring.

hinode Said,

Hrm, I can’t really see a risk of adding filler. Disappearance has a pretty tightly-defined timeline and the plot revolves around a lot of key figures not being very familiar with each other, which doesn’t leave much space for adding random new scenes to pad the runtime.

Now, what they could do to piss the fanbase off is release a bunch of slightly different versions for the home video market, sorta like Pokemon games. So version A will have better animated versions of a couples scenes, version B will have better animation for a different set of scenes, and so on.

Haesslich Said,

hinode: Nobody foresaw them stretching out Endless Eight the way they did either, as it didn’t have enough meat for eight episodes, but the Marketing Morons did it anyways to avoid anime-only material.

Dr Fry Said,

Screw Disappearance. Sure, it’s a well-written novel, it expand son Kyon’s and Yuki’s character, blah blah blah, except one problem: it does not contain the stuff the fans usually like about the series.

To tell the truth, not enough people have read Intrigues, the 7th novel. That, personally, is my favorite, because it introduces the actual Antagonists of the series, it evolves Mikuru beyond a mere Moeblob, Tsuruya features prominently in it, and Haruhi has a real moe bit near the end of it.

Sure, Disappearance has Asakura(‘s delicious thighs) returning, moe moe Yuki, etc., but as far as the series goes, Intrigues just stands out.